Abstract
Understanding the propagation from meteorological to hydrological drought is crucial for hydrological drought monitoring and forecasting. In this study, daily precipitation and streamflow data of 16 sub-catchments in the Huaihe River Basin from 1980 to 2014 are used to establish a framework to quantitatively reveal the propagation relationship between meteorological and hydrological drought and explore the impact of climate, catchment properties, and human activities on drought propagation. The propagation from meteorological to hydrological drought is divided into three types. Type-1 propagation indicates that one or several meteorological droughts trigger a hydrological drought. The occurrence probability of Type-1 calculated by the conditional probability on SPI and SRI series varies from 0.25 to 0.48 among all catchments. Features of Type-1 propagation can be concluded as lengthening of duration, amplification of severity, lag of onset time, and reduction of speed. Type-2 propagation indicates that a meteorological drought occurs but no hydrological drought occurs, which accounts for 63–77% of the total meteorological drought events in all catchments. Type-3 indicates that a hydrological drought occurs without a proceeding meteorological drought, which is caused mostly by human activities. The occurrence probability of Type-3 ranges from 0.31 to 0.58. Climate factors have significant effects on hydrological drought duration, while catchment properties represented by topographic index and base flow index significantly relate to hydrological drought severity, propagation time, and occurrence probability of Type-1 propagation. The ratio of crop land reflecting irrigation on hydrological drought is far less than that of topographic index, denoting that the impact of irrigation on hydrological drought is less than that of catchment properties. Reservoirs have significant effects on alleviating the duration and severity of extreme hydrological droughts, but little effects on the average duration and severity of hydrological droughts.
Highlights
Drought is one of the costliest natural disasters and is usually categorized into four types: Meteorological drought, hydrological drought, agricultural drought, and socioeconomic drought [1]
The duration and severity of hydrological droughts vary significantly across catchments. This is due to the fact that the difference of meteorological drought characteristics among catchments is mainly determined by the quantity and concentration of precipitation, whereas hydrological drought characteristics are influenced by the combination of climate, catchment properties, and human intervention, which exhibit large variability among catchments
The spatial pattern of meteorological drought characteristics is different from that of hydrological drought characteristics, for example, the longest duration of meteorological drought at 30-day scale is in XX, while the longest duration of hydrological drought is in BT, while the greatest severity of meteorological and hydrological drought is in HB and XGS
Summary
Drought is one of the costliest natural disasters and is usually categorized into four types: Meteorological drought, hydrological drought, agricultural drought, and socioeconomic drought [1]. Drought propagation refers to the process that a precipitation anomaly propagates through the terrestrial part of the hydrological cycle from a meteorological drought into soil moisture depletion and eventually into a hydrological drought [2,3]. The pooling phenomenon is that several meteorological droughts combine into a prolonged hydrological drought. A lag occurs between meteorological, soil moisture, and hydrological drought. Droughts get longer in duration when moving from meteorological via soil moisture to hydrological drought. Yang et al [5] found that severity calculated as the accumulated anomaly during the drought period amplified from meteorological to hydrological drought. Liu et al [4], found that severity calculated by a cumulative value representing the total moisture deficits weakened from meteorological to hydrological drought based on the SPEI (Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index) and SRI (Standardized Runoff Index). Knowing more about the variation of drought characteristics quantitatively will provide a stronger basis for monitoring and forecasting hydrological droughts
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